James E. McDonald statement, Symposium on UFOs, House Committee on Science and Astronautics

my checks on Australian UFO cases. There are probably of the order of a hundred cases on record (see Ref. 10 for a
list of some dozens). In only a very few cases has there been any permanent damage to the vehicle's electrical
system. In the Levelland case, for example, as soon as the luminous object receded from a given disturbed vehicle,
its lights came back on automatically (in instances where the switches had been left on), and the engines were
immediately restartable. The latter point in itself makes the "wet ignition" explanation unreasonable, of course.
It is unclear how such effects might be produced. One suggestion that has been made as to ignition-failure is that
very strong magnetic fields might so saturate the iron core of the coil that it would drive the operating point up onto
the knee of the magnetization curve, so that the input magnetic oscillations would produce only very small output
effects. Only a few oersteds would have to be produced right at the coil to accomplish this kind of effect, but when
one back-calculates, allowing for shielding effects and typical distances, and assumes an inverse-third-power diple
field, the requisite H-values within a few feet of the "UFO diple" end, to speak here somewhat loosely, come out in
the megagauss range. Curiously, a number of other back-calculations of magnetic fields end up in this same range;
but obviously terrestrial technologies would not easily yield such intensities. Clear evidence for residual
magnetization that might be expected in the foregoing hypothesis does not exist, so far as I know. The actual
mechanism may be quite unlike that mentioned. How lights are extinguished is even less clear, although, in some
vehicles, relays in the lighting circuits might be magnetically closed. The lights pose more mystery than the ignition.
Such cases do not constitute very disturbing questions of hazard or hostility. One might argue that highway
accidents could be caused by lighting and ignition failures; however, more serious highway-accident dangers are
implicit in other UFO cases where no electrical disturbance was caused. Many motorists have reported nearly losing
control of vehicles when UFOs have swooped down over them; this hazard is distinctly more evident than hazard
from the car-stopping phenomenon. Indeed, the number of instances of what we might term "car-buzzing" instances
that have involved road-accident hazards is large enough to be mildly disturbing, yet I know of no official
recognition of this facet of the UFO problem either. An incident I learned of in Australia involved such fright on the
part of the passengers of the "buzzed" vehicle that they jumped out of the car before it had come to a stop, and it
went into a ditch. A similar instance occurred not long ago in the U.S. For reasons of space-limitations, I shall not
cite other such cases, though it would not be difficult to assemble a list that would run to perhaps a few dozen.
2. Mild radiation exposure:
By "radiation" here, I do not mean exposure to radioactivity or to other nuclear radiations, but skin irritations
comparable to sunburn, etc. I have interviewed a number of persons who have experienced skin-reddening from
exposure to (visible) radiations near UFOs. Rene Gilham, of Merom, Indiana, watched a UFO hovering over his
home-area on the evening of Nov. 6, 1957, and received mild skin-burns, for example. I found in speaking with him
that the symptoms were gone in a matter of days, with no after-effects. The witnesses in a car-stopping incident at
Loch Raven Dam, Md., on the night of Oct. 26, 1958, who were close to a brightly luminous, blimp-sized object
after getting out of their stopped car, experienced skin-reddening for which they obtained medical attention. Without
citing other such instances, I would say that these cases are not suggestive of any serious hazard, but they warrant
scientific attention.
3. More serious physical injuries:
James Flynn, of Ft. Myers , Fla., in a case that has been rather well checked by both APRO and NICAP
investigators, reportedly suffered unusual injuries and physical effects when he sought to check what he had taken to
be a malfunctioning test vehicle from Cape Canaveral that had come down in the Everglades, March 15, 1965. I
have spoken with Flynn and others who know him and believe that his case deserved much more than the superficial
official attention it received when he reported it to proper authorities. He was hospitalized for about a week, treated
for a deep hemorrhage of one eye (without medical evidence of any blow), and suffered loss of all of the principal
deep-tendon reflexes for a number of days, according to his physician's statement, published by APRO (Ref. 45).
An instance of more than mere skin-reddening, associated with direct contact with a landed unidentified object
reportedly occurred in Hamilton, Ontario, March 29, 1966. Charles Cozens, then age 13, stated to police and to
reporters (and recounted to me in a telephone interview with him and his father) that he had seen two rather small
whitish, luminous objects come down in an open field in Hamilton that evening- He moved towards them out of
curiosity, and states that he finally moved right up beside them, and touched the surface of one of them to see what it
felt like. It was not hot, and seemed unusually smooth. One of the two small (8 ft by 4 ft plan form, 3-4 feet high)
bun-shaped objects had a projection on one end that the boy thought might have been some kind of antenna, so he